Deloitte hires five senior executives from Korn Ferry India

MUMBAI: Accounting firm Deloitte has hired five senior executives from the India unit of leading global organisational and people advisory firm Korn Ferry International, which recently acquired human resource consulting company Hay Group, and appointed them as partners.

This comes days after Deloitte brought on board about 20 partners and more than 300 executives from rival KPMG's advisory practice.

Debabrat Mishra joined Deloitte's human capital practice in September. Four more senior partners including Gaurav Lahiri, who started Hay Group in India, Nitin Razdan and Peeyush Arya have put in their papers at Korn FerryHay Group and are set to join Deloitte by December, people familiar with the matter said.

When asked to confirm whether Hay Group partners are joining Deloitte, Navnit Singh, chairman at Korn Ferry International said, "I have no idea and have no comments to make."

An email sent to Deloitte did not elicit any response till late evening on Thursday. Korn Ferry had acquired Hay Group in September last year and completed the integration in December.

Consultancy business has seen some consolidation in the past few years.

While some consulting firms have been acquired by either Big Four firms or technology companies, in most cases problems have arisen over assimilation due to a cultural mismatch.

Most of the standalone firms have been struggling with revenue and retaining their best talent, according to experts. Deloitte has been aggressively looking for expansion in advisory business.

Under its new leader N Venkatram, Deloitte has been aggressively scaling up its advisory practice in the past few months. With the latest addition, the firm's advisory practice will now be the second largest after market leader EY.

Deloitte's push for advisory business comes at a time when regulatory changes could impact its revenue. The firm, which is the strongest in auditing practice in the country and has marquee clients including Tata and Mahindra Group companies, could lose some of its biggest clients due to the mandatory audit rotation.

It hopes to get work from the audit clients who will be rotating out. With the latest additions, the firm's human capital practice will be the biggest after market leader Aon Hewitt's.

Human capital practice is a growing area for consulting firms as scaling up companies need help in dealing with increasing organisational complexity and leadership issues.